Have others got the ROBO call I got today telling lies and distortions about  Peter?

This is scary stuff!

I used to think Dubie  was like jim Douglas.  Mr Milktoast, a centerist republican who was well liked and who you could work with.

After last night’s debate when he stood up for the tea party, said the  the IBM spokesperson was lying when he repeated that IBM has no plans to leave VT  and accused Peter of lying right to Peter’s face on corrections even after Peter had explained his plan very clearly.

Well now i think Dubie is a SCARY PRO LIFE RIGHT WING EXTREMIST.

Thank god VT  has a good education system! [  which Dubie hopes to dismantle]  hopefully the average Vermonter is smart enough to figure out his message is all FEAR MONGERING CRAP.

This has certainly motivated me to action.

What are 10 steps the typical person can take to counter this out of state alternate reality – without stooping to the same level??

I just got a Robo-Call from “Friends of Brain Dubie.”  The subject was how scary, unsafe and irresponsible it would be to release non-violent criminals, and how Shumlin wants to do just that.

The problem is, there is no logic to the argument.  They are trying to make me scared, that releasing these people “onto our streets” will jeopordize our safety.  Evidently these “friends of Brian Dubie” don’t understand what “non-violent” means.  Should we fear for our safety if tax evaders and embezzelors are roaming the streets at night?

The elephant in the closet here is that “non-violent” is a buzz word for “drug users and dealers.”

Now if someone smokes pot in their own home, or if they grow a couple plants in their back yard and get caught, that’s a non-violent offender.  Am I afraid of that person?  No.  Is that person going to make the streets less safe?  No.  Should you and I, the taxpayers, be paying for that person to be sitting behind bars?  I say NO.

If that person went and stabbed somed someone, or robbed a bank at gunpoint when they were high on marijuana, then that would be a violent crime and they should be locked up.

I think we need to read between the lines here and while the buzzword is “non-violent” what Peter is really referring to is the many people behind bars for using or selling a controlled substance that really is a personal choice to use or not.  Putting people in jail for ingesting a substance, especially when it’s a plant, seems archaic to me.  Sure there are some embezzelors and tax evaders behind bars and we can debate that… but I think the majority of the people in question are in there for drug offenses.  Now keep in mind that our country has more people in jail per capita than any other country in the world, and the majority of these people are there for these so called “non-violent” offenses.  And accordingly, we spend more money on keeping people in jail than any other country.  So maybe we should actually think this through instead of trying to scare people.

I think also that Peter must be telling us he wants to change the laws and reduce the sentencing for these “non-violent” people too.  And presumably, if some of these substances were made legal like alcohol, that would take the dealers out of the picture and all we’d have left is the users to worry about.  So I guess Brian Dubie is telling us we should all run home and lock our doors be there could be pot smokers roaming the streets!

Peter is on the correct side of this issue.  The robocalls are just trying to scare people into voting for Dubie, without any basis in reality.  There’s no reason to be scared of pot smokers.  For the most part, they are pacifists and a bit lazy.  Something to be scared of?  Nah.

Of course, no Governor can make a law all by himself.  If this process ever began, there would be a long debate on which offenders are “non-violent” and which ones need to remain behind bars.  And a vote in the Legislature would be a part of the process.  I trust the legislature would do its part to keep the violent people behind bars and give some of these lazy potheads their lives back.

So I call BS on the “Friends of Brian Dubie” for trying to instill fear in the minds of voters.  Remember it’s the VIOLENT criminals we have to fear, not the non-violent ones.

Despite the underground machinations reported in this diary, the Vermont AFL-CIO endorsed Peter Shumlin over Brian Dubie yesterday.

A defeat for the Vermont IBEW leadership (and George Clain in particular) who, in a fit of self-destructive pique, have chosen to move beyond understandably advocating for rank and file employees at Vermont Yankee to become the loudest cheerleaders in the state for demonstrably anti-labor candidate Brian Dubie (and in the process, reducing themselves to the status of unpaid spokespeople for that champion of the workingman, the Entergy Corporation).

The next defeat for Mr. Clain and company comes in November.

Dubie’s spotty attendance record was an issue in past elections,along with his reluctance to debate. As he geared up this past year for his run for the big office you might think he would have made a better effort to show up and set this issue aside.Tune up his image.

However an AP article today explores his recent legislative attendance record: Vermont senators wondered in 2010: Where's Dubie? and shows otherwise.

The first duty listed for Lt.Gov. under the Vermont constitution is presiding over the Senate .The record show him absent for the first fall of the gavel one third of the days the Senate met this year.  

Dubie actually missed the opening gavel on 25 of the 60 days the Senate met, according to the daily Senate Journals for the 2010 session. But five of those instances overlapped with times Gov. Jim Douglas was out of state, according to Douglas travel records obtained by the AP on a public records request. The state Constitution bars a lieutenant governor from presiding over the Senate when acting as governor.  

Dubie also said he had a deployment as a colonel in the Air Force Reserve earlier this year. His campaign later acknowledged that the deployment came during the Legislature's Town Meeting break, and didn't interfere with his Senate service.

Opinions naturally differ about how much Dubie’s absences actually made. However as senate president pro tempore Peter Shumlin had to do fill in for him at the podium during these periods and could not participate in debates.

This is telling about his priorities ,though he says he’s proud of his one third absence record and says, Senate work is something

“I take pretty seriously.”

Serious by degree? It appears he must take his job as airline pilot and reserve officer seriously and his Lt.Gov position only pretty seriously in terms of being there.  

It didn’t go un noticed among legislators of both parties  

… legislative aides and one of Dubie's fellow Republicans, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to be seen criticizing the nominee of his party. “It was definitely a topic of conversation,” the Republican senator said.

…today’s headline is “Dubie presses Shumlin on Corrections.”

Apparently my answer to the question “Will the Free Press coverage of the election be all about vapid surface assessments? is yes.

To be fair, however, the piece itself is a bit more fair than the headline suggests, but it creates this sense that the debate was hostile and bitter, such as with this paragraph:

The continuing dispute over Shumlin’s Corrections plan highlights an increasingly bristly relationship between the candidates that arose several times during the 90-minute debate… Shumlin said Dubie wasn’t telling the truth in a Corrections ad he is airing. Dubie lashed out about an advertisement by an outside group that criticizes his stance on the future of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.

While technically accurate as far as what was said goes, the debate was, as with all the debates so far, cordial, polite and reasonable.  They disagree, fairly strongly, but no one is being nasty.  No one is being hostile.  They are sticking to their positions and their points of view.

We’re having good debates that do not debase the candidates.  Why do we have to pretend otherwise?

Is anyone else watching this?  Dubie and Shumlin are debating live on Vermont Public Television as of 6:30pm.

Impressions so far is that Dubie is just not very good at this.  He started off the debate by holding up pieces of paper and pointing to them.  

Feel free to comment about the debate as it goes along.

Five-Part Question Posed to 2010 Vermont General Assembly Candidates regarding homelessness and affordable housing:

If the voters within your legislative district were to elect you to the seat within the Vermont General Assembly being sought, when it comes to addressing homelessness and affordable housing across the state, please answer the following five-part question:

1. What priority would both of these matters hold within your set of legislative priorities?
2. What concrete steps would you propose the state take to address these matters?
3. What are the expected outcomes by which the state should measure the effectiveness of such proposals?
4. What timelines would you propose be set for addressing such?
5. How would you recommend the state fund such proposals?

Due to the extensive work involved in contacting various campaigns as well as compiling responses from the candidates, which I experienced somewhat when doing the 2010 Vermont Gubernatorial candidates version, this version will mainly be blogged up in the hope that candidates will avail themselves of the opportunity to answer such and make their answers known to voters within their district. In addition, if a given candidate has a blog or Website, they can list their responses to the questions there and/or can also provide their answers by posting a comment to this blog post.

Voters should also feel free to pose these as well as related questions to the candidates running for seats in either the state senate or house of representatives.

(cross-posted from Vermont Watch, here)

*Update*: These same questions were also posted to iBrattleboro, here.

BRIAN DUBIE WON’T

SAY WHAT HE REALLY BELIEVES

‘CAUSE IT’S DUBIEOUS

(This is too much of a discussion starter to leave in the sidebar. Pie, anyone? – promoted by kestrel9000)

Just wanted to say that despite being supportive of anything that is called “Anyone but Dubie” I find the ad posted on the GMD site and the way in general that ABD presents materials is demeaning to women. I would like to suggest that the ad be deleted and the organization be asked to provide something less demeaning to women.

I am primarily a stay-at-home-dad, but during the school year I teach a few telecommunications classes at Champlain College.  This semester is the first we've needed daycare, and we're very fortunate to have found a provider about four hundred yards down the road from us whose schedule fits our needs of a few hours a week while I'm on campus.

Though this is actually a new operation, the owner has been involved with child care for a long time and previously ran another type of business.  In her current capacity, she really represents a “perfect storm” of elements that are key to Vermont's economic fortunes: startup, small biz, daycare.

As I've observed before, startups and small businesses are our real jobs engines.  And finding people to watch over their precious ones is hugely important for parents who are trying to provide for their families: the absence of reliable and affordable child care is a barrier for many employees entering the workforce.

From the business perspective, there are benefits as well:

Many companies…believe that there are substantial benefits from offering child care services: 62% of respondents reported higher morale, 54% reported reduced absenteeism, 52% reported increased productivity, and 37% reported lower turnover.

That all sounds like providing childcare is a Good Thing all around.  It also turns out to have an average multiplier of 1.91 across the 50 states (Vermont is smack dab in the middle), so is clearly an economic contributer.

So I support universal access to childcare and agree with those who recommend we expand our provider licensing capacity. That, along with perhaps some sort of childcare subsidies, is an investment that will have fairly immediate positive impact by enabling the establishment of new small businesses and allowing more people to be able to work as jobs are created thanks to increased demand.

In a related vein, I like the idea of universal pre-k education for similar reasons.  Studies have shown that every dollar we invest ultimately gets us a return if anywhere between 4 and 17 dollars.  It carries myriad health, education and other social benefits and contributes greatly to economic growth.

It might seem counterintuitive since we've been bombarded with overly-simplistic analysis and rhetoric about the economy and budget, but it's clear that we must increase spending where we get the biggest bang for our buck.  It generates economic activity now and prevents more costly spending down the road.  Business people know you have to spend money to make money, and childcare/early ed is a great investment opportunity that will help us out of our current slump and secure a more prosperous future for Vermont.

todd

(x-posted at Todd for Vermont House)